Hancock Park residents are taking matters into their own hands after a surge in copper thefts left streets plunged into darkness for months, and with repairs potentially delayed even further.
Last fall, thieves stripped about a dozen public streetlights of copper wiring over three city blocks, creating a dangerous situation for those who live there.
“A walk down Orange Drive feels treacherous — like something out of the ‘Twilight Zone,’” one resident said.
“We’ve had car thefts. We’ve had break-ins. It just feels dangerous,” homeowner David Barlag added.
Solar-powered light attached to a nonfunctional street lamp illuminates a section of sidewalk near Orange Drive in Hancock Park. (Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)
The city’s Public Works Department was alerted to the thefts last October, but residents were told repairs would take approximately nine months. Now, that timeline is threatened by a separate burglary at a city storage yard, where a large quantity of replacement wire was stolen, according to L.A. Police Department Senior Lead Officer Harris Cho, who shared the information at a recent Wilshire Neighborhood Council meeting.
“The actual warehouse that has all of the types of cables and wires that we need to fix these lights … was broken into and all of that was stolen,” said Sixto Sicilia, of the Greater Wilshire Neighborhood Council.
Requests for comment from the Los Angeles Police Department and the Department of Public Works went unanswered.
Faced with a potential year without streetlights, residents have pooled their resources to purchase and install makeshift solar-powered lamps on the disabled lightposts.
1. Functional streetlights near Orange Drive in Hancock Park. (Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times) 2. Solar-powered light attached to a nonfunctional street lamp illuminates a section of sidewalk near Orange Drive in Hancock Park. (Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)
While the solar lights offer some illumination, Barlag said visibility remains poor.
Hancock Park isn’t alone in facing this issue. Copper theft plunged the 6th Street Bridge into darkness shortly after its opening. In Pico Union, pedestrians were robbed at gunpoint, with criminals taking advantage of the cover of night.
These thefts also threaten essential services, potentially disrupting 911 systems and other telecommunications. Last year, copper wire thieves were suspected of cutting phone lines to seniors in South Los Angeles. The following month, thieves caused widespread internet outages across Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
Data from the Bureau of Street Lighting shows a dramatic increase in reported streetlight repair requests in Los Angeles over the past several years. The city logged 14,328 requests in 2018, soaring to an all-time high of 46,079 in 2024. Early 2025 saw L.A. neighborhoods reporting unprecedented streetlight failures, largely due to theft and vandalism.
“Neighbors are being burglarized quite often. For the streets to be this dark is even more of a danger,” Sicilia said. “We’ve had situations where homes are actively being cased by burglars, with people walking by, and no one has noticed.”
Residents are now organizing neighborhood patrols, and many have invested in security cameras, burglar alarms, and even private security firms, hoping for a faster response than law enforcement can provide.
